This application claims benefit of Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-349445 filed on Dec. 2, 2002, the contents of which are incorporated by the reference.
The present invention relates to a wireless network service provision method and a wireless network system, which are adapted to provide communication services including internet connection by permitting access to a predetermined access point in a limitative area via a local interface such as wireless LAN, for instance a hot spot.
So-called “hot spot service” is in practical use, which provides internet connection or contents services in particular places such as airports, hotels, coffee shops and fast-food shops. This is the provision of such services as internet connection as services with respect to a very limitative area by wireless techniques called local wireless interface such as wireless LAN and Bluetooth.
In such a hot spot, when performing communication via a local wireless service such as wireless LAN, a WEP key like those of neighbor users is usually used, thus readily making possible the wiretapping.
In the wireless communication in a closed environment such as home wireless LAN and enterprise wireless LAN, a method of providing a wireless communication device and a wireless communication method which can prohibit wiretapping and also a method of ciphering in order to prevent wiretapping from a wireless section with a wireless LAN system have heretofore been proposed, for instance, Japanese patent laid-open 2001-345795 and 2000-31980.
Furthermore, it has been proposed to build a virtual wireless LAN system, in which means for managing the attributes of LAN terminals is provided in a home network side managing server, means for determining the attributes of the LAN terminals and means for determining the attributes of the IAN terminals on the basis of the determined results are provided in a remote network side movement destination server, and it is thus made possible to discriminate packets sent out from a virtual wireless LAN terminal to a wireless base station (Japanese patent laid-open Hei 10-173665, for instance).
Further, it has been proposed to realize a LAN system, on which packet data are ciphered by using scramble patterns each peculiar for each of a plurality of broadcast domain and sent out to each terminal. Each terminal deciphers the ciphered data by using a scramble pattern provided to the own broadcast domain, thus preventing production of a correct replica of a different broadcast domain packet data, if received, to eliminate the possibility of data leaks and permitting data exchanges between terminals belonging to each of a plurality of broadcast domains (see Japanese patent laid-open Hei 10-173692, for instance).
However, any of the above prior art proposals, although being excellent in view of perfectly eliminating the possibility of data leaks, are complicated and large in scale too much to be applied to recently spreading hot spot services or the like.